Wednesday, November 24, 2010

My apologies for this pics-heavy post, but this is a case where I think it's justified to bombard you with lots of photographs. The Spanish old school RPG Aventuras en la Marca del Esteis about to be released and one of its authors, Pedro Gil, kindly sent me some pictures of this boxed set and its contents that I'd like to share with everyone.

Here's a nice shot of the box itself. As you can see, it's a large box.

Here's the box opened, so that you can see its contents: a rulebook, some dice, a referee's screen (which isn't easily visible in this shot) -- and plenty of room for more stuff.

Here's a better shot of the rulebook, which is a little over 140 pages in length, I believe. Bear in mind that those 140 pages cover the same ground as Moldvay/Cook's 128 combined pages, plus a setting overview, and introductory adventures.

Here's the back cover:

Here's a photo of the character generation chapter.

Weapon and armor illustrations:

The monsters chapter:

And here's the map from the setting chapter. I really like the style chosen for the cartography.

As you can see, La Marca del Este is a very attractive game, certainly one of the nicest looking retro-clones published to date. I'm not sure why RPGs from outside North America almost universally look better than what we get over here, but this game does little to make me think any differently.

There are rumors of a possible English-language version in the future, which, if they prove true, would be of interest to me. I read, to the extent my meager facility with Spanish allowed me to do so, a pre-release copy of the rules and I was quite impressed by what I saw. La Marca del Este is a complete game under a single cover and, while a lot of its content should be familiar to long-time fans of old school D&D, there are some nice new wrinkles of interest even to experienced players, such as a non-spellcasting ranger known as an "explorer," for example. And of course there's the artwork and graphic design, which is in a class all by itself from what I have seen thus far.

All in all, this is good news for old school gaming, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries. I hope Aventuras en la Marca del Este proves successful and exceeds the expectations of everyone involved.

"Welcome to the "East-Mark", a world overflowing with adventures, characters of legend, monsters, dark dungeons, unconquerable fortresses, and powerful magic.Inspired in the best fantasy role-playing game ever made, this manual that you have in your hands is a powerful tool that, with the aid of your imagination, will allow you to live countless adventures without leaving your house. "Adventures In The East-Mark" it's a role-playing game by "the old ways" [literal translation!], like those games of yore that were simpler and funnier. Now you know, young adventurer, sharpen your sword, get your shield ready and check your backpack, for a world filled with adventures awaits for your arrival inside this red box...

Thanks James for posting about our game. Actually we sold the first 200 boxes in just one day. We would release 400 more boxes in a few weeks, for Xmas season. We're also working in an english version of Aventuras en la Marca del Este.

Thomas, I'm afraid you aren't right at all. In the REST of Europe, they train Art as it deserves, here in Spain, the thing is a little bit more complicated (arts schools are often a building with a mess of talent and bad administrated chaos). Sometimes, there are a good school, but it's hard to find (I move inside art-student circles, and the feeling is the same: the art training here could be much better).

"Aventuras en La Marca del Este", it's the result of a huge amount of love with the work they did, with the content and with the design, or at least this is how I perceive. All the people involved in this project, seems to have make a great effort in their task, and here it's the result. :D.

And they are working in the english verison as it says Steinkel!!

Sorry for my english, unfortunately the 80% of the english I know, I've learned for myself, not at the school or bachelor :(.

There aren´t races and classes, but archetypes; in other words, dwarves are class and race at the same time. This archetypes are, warrior, mage, ranger (in spanish <>), thief, paladin, cleric, dwarf, elf and halfling.

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